Tuesday, February 01, 2005

Another people processor

I went today to pay the now notorious speeding ticket and was presented w/ the option of traffic school. Despite costing $3 more the promise of having the ticket kept off my record and the lure of a potentially lower insurance rate (at least that's the vague whisper circling in my mental vortex) prompted me to wade through a brief encounter w/ local bureaucracy to make it happen.

I ended up on the 3rd floor of the 4th judicial district courthouse next to a strange blend of "perps": I remember a guy clad very casually in what seemed to be an aqua jogging suit, though it may have just been that the overwhelmingly gaudy color made me think it was a full-body ensemble. An elderly couple sat cheerfully speaking with a tan, young-looking smile and a haircut, who, when he was next on the list for the hot seat, sprang up from his seat and bounded to Room 307 like he was in a pasture full of sunflowers.

Sitting there contemplating the pasty blue paint, the sullen looks of another traffic violator next to me, and unable to entertain myself by eavesdropping on a conversation between a very pregnant woman and her "ex-representation" (who seemed to have forgotten her name), I took the elevator down and went home to get my sole textbook for my film genres class.

After I returned, I noticed a few others had joined in the line (each has to sign up on a clipboard and then be called in) who better matched the seedy surroundings of relatively small-town vice. A muddy blonde miscreant w/ blood shot eyes was directing traffic: he smirkingly tried to show an uppity fellow ---himself quite out of place in an olive dress shirt, tie, and dapper overcoat--- to the clipboard.

On a side note, I was struck by the sinister scent of cigarettes in the elevator. Keenly aware of (and relieved by) Utah's Clean Air act, I'm certain that the parade of smokers entering any public domain cemented their stink into the floor carpeting, the faux wood finish, and the electronic paneling so that others will know the same corruption... LOL. I speak of cigarette stink as if it's a contagion, and I suppose it is.

At any rate, cinematography was relatively uneventful, except that I was enthralled by the various glimmers of talent in the room. Some of the photos were just plain stellar.